Does it ever happen to you that you are feeling a little anxious, sad or overwhelmed and want to do you daily meditation, so you sit down, close your eyes, but feel like you can’t meditate? Well, what is actually happening is that you forgot what meditating truly is. Meditation means ” to be familiar with”, it is basically a tool to allow you to observe your thoughts and become aware of them, and by doing that, to calm your mind and create more positive feelings. The objective of meditation is not to be completely without any thoughts (even if that could happen when we experience profound calmness of the mind) but just to be aware of them and control them rather than the opposite.

So, when you meditate but start being overwhelmed with thoughts, well, do not worry, keep going and start observing them, start looking at them as if they were not yours. The idea is for you to start learning to be detached from your thoughts, so that they don’t control you and don’t create ”negative” emotions.

When you start looking at them you can understand where they come from and what you should do about them. For example, if you have a thought that says ”I really need to respond to that email” and you start feeling anxious, you just have to look at it and know that you will answer that email as soon as you finish you meditation, and you will answer it in a calm way, not taken over by your anxiousness. This meditation is really for you, to take the time in your day to collect yourself and regulate yourself. If you react to external events without having regulated then your actions may be dictated by fears, anxious feeling, anger etc and that will create a chain reaction where these events keep on coming. However, if you regulate and act from a state of calmness and clear mind, than you will create something else. When action is needed, it is really important to act. Many of our overwhelming thoughts or negative emotions are caused by knowing on a conscious level that an action needs to be taken but not taking it. It is important to be aware of the deep sub-conscious programs that do not make us take that action. It is usually because of the fear of being alone, being rejected etc. If that is the case, then reprograming work is needed.

Another example is having thoughts such as ”nobody loves me” . Well, this is a different situation where all you need to do is look at this thought with compassion, but with a knowing that it is not true. This will require reprogramming work. An extremely effective way of reprogramming is actually during the meditation it self. So in this specific case, you can redirect your thought as you become aware of it. So, as soon as you become aware of that thought, you can think something positive that you know it is true instead. It is extremely important to not just think positive thought, you need to know they are true. If you don’t, you may even worsen the situation as your sub-conscious will think you are lying to yourself and betraying yourself.

And you can start small! For example by thinking ”I have this close friend or brother who loves me”, ” I deserve to be loved like any other person”, or ”someday I will find the person for me” . This will automatically make you feel calmer and arise positive emotions. The more you do it the more you will reprogram your brain. And this is because the brain doesn’t know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. So if you start feeling a loving feeling with meditation every day, your brain will think that you are loved and loving, doesn’t matter it is through a meditation or a relationship.

So in a nutshell, if you feel like you can’t meditate, all you need to do is observe your thoughts.. without judgment.. and , after the meditation, act on them if action is needed, from a loving and calmer state. If no action is needed, then start reprogramming your thoughts in order for them to become weaker and weaker until they are completely replaced by more positive thoughts.